I Love You
by TwistingKaleidoscope
Summary: The stories are all the same. They all lead to a goodbye. If only Castle was more observant. Beckett/Castle.


**Disclaimed.**

**Summary: **The stories are all the same. They all lead to a goodbye. If only Castle was more observant. Beckett/Castle.

**Warning: **Very sensitive subject included!

**Author's Note: **Well, I do hope you enjoy this. This is kind of different from what I'm used to doing. (: Please read, review, and enjoy…or hate me. (;

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><p><strong>I Love You<strong>

_A Story of Castle's Inattentiveness_

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><p>It is an overcast, cloudy day. The clouds hang over above, threatening, tantalizing the possibility of rain. The sun, however, despite everything that tells it to do otherwise, is still shining, fighting its way through the clouds. The air is cold, windy. It's the middle of July. He smiles at this. He takes it as a sign, giving him the courage that he had been gathering for a lifetime. It's this day. This depressing, yet hopeful, this contradicting, strange day that he kisses her. It's in the precinct, in front of their world. She had smiled when he entered, his pulse pounding in his veins. "Cas-" she had managed to get out before he had reached her with long, purposeful strides and wrapped her in his embrace. He had kissed her then with all the might he could muster.<p>

And she only smiles with a secretive sort of smile when they break apart. He stares at her with fearful eyes, imagining too many scenarios for his brain to rightly process as his mind is still frozen with the startling knowledge that he had just kissed _her_. He's reassured, though, when only moments later she places a soft kiss to his lips. "Congratulations, Castle," she whispers to him with a wise tone. "It's only taken you four years."

He's just processed this when he's kissing her again. He does not hear the clapping, the whispers, the laughter and cheers, however, because he's so wrapped her in her and everything's right.

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><p>They date for a few weeks before he whispers <em>"I love you"<em> to her before he kisses her and they make love for the first time. It's so perfect and just breathtaking, candles are scattered about the room as he touches her and makes her cry _his name_ and it's just them (_Castle&Beckett)_ the way it should've been all along, that he doesn't even notice it. He's considerate and loving and savoring because it's _her _the woman who managed to turn him completely wayward, the woman who managed to capture his heart and continuously mesmerize him. It's perfect and he wonders a million times why they hadn't done this sooner. He never notices that she never says "I love you" back.

He doesn't notice, either as he holds her close to him later in the night as his eyelids droop with a severe exhaustion as he whispers _"I love you" _over and over as he fades into a deep sleep that she lies awake, staring off into a distance with tears brimming in her eyes.

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><p>A month later, she screams when she sees the sign on the white stick cursing him for all he has. He rushing to her when she calls him in a terrified voice. He sees the test and his face lights up. He twirls her around and kisses her and doesn't even notice that her smile isn't exactly right, that it doesn't quite meet her eyes. He falls to his knees before her, pressing his hands into her flat stomach whispering words that she doesn't try to here. He doesn't notice the frown on her face or the tears in her eyes. She blinks until they disappear and banish the frown away.<p>

Because he's so _happyhappyhappy_ that she cannot stomach to tell him that she had never wanted this, never wanted the child whose life she could not guarantee to be everything it should. She continues to quietly curse him, because she was _careful_, she was always so careful, but he with his words and charms and everything had forever changed her and her life. And it was for good.

But she just knew, with an ominous feeling, that it wasn't.

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><p>She never sees the car lights, but she hears the sounds echoing in her mind. The screech. The squeal. The crashing of metal, distorting and bending crashing into her expanding stomach, pinning her where she cannot move. She cries and begs and pleads that what she knew to be true was not real and instead just a dream that she would soon awake from. She fades from consciousness with tears staining her face, just as the blood stains her clothes as sirens sound in the distance.<p>

She awakes in a hospital room, her body feeling completely wrong. She squeezes her eyes shut. She cries for the loss, her body and heart aching. Guilt fills her. She never was grateful and caring until it was too late, and now, a little bit of relief fills her because she can never scar the child as she had been scarred, as it had scarred her, but she cannot help but mourn.

Castle squeezes her hands in his own tightly before enveloping her in his arms.

She whispers _"I love you" _to him for the first time just to make that look in his eyes go away.

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><p>He asks her to marry him a year after he kissed her in that crowded precinct. There are rose petals scattered everywhere and candles on every surface, and it's so <em>not <em>her. She would be most comfortable if he had just gotten down on one knee after dinner, but he had done all this. _So _much. He chokes and stumbles on the words before finding his rhythm. She grins at him, despite her thudding heart and her many questions, but it's a fearful grin.

But he looks at her with this look in his eyes, like she is the only person he cares about, the only person in his world. He's so in love with her and scared and she's never seen him like this before. She takes a shaky breath. Some love might not be enough, but feelings grow and she cannot lose him. She's selfish and just as scared. And he'll be happy, living in blissful ignorance.

So she closes her eyes and opens them again. She smiles this time, for real. "Yes. I'll marry you." He wraps her in his arms and spins her around and _laughs_. Tears fall down her cheeks and he _doesn't _understand. He kisses them away before returning to his knees. He has to still her hand with his own, but he's shaking too, so it takes longer than it should for the right to be put on her finger.

It fits and it's gorgeous, so breathtaking beautiful, and although the proposal wasn't her, the ring certainly was. It fits and yet it doesn't. He kisses her and she kisses back, hard, trying to push her thoughts from her mind. It was just like the movies. And yet, it was not. The main character was too scarred to do this, too screwed up to ever fit and live a happily ever after with the hero, the knight in shining armor. She was the kind who was always destined for unhappiness and heartache. She was the one who would die and the viewers would cry, but understand and yet not, dreaming and imagining things the way they should be, if the world was right and fair. But it was not, she would die and that would be her relief, her freedom, her true happily ever after that she never could receive in the cruel world.

Castle's happy, though , and then she is.

Everything's real, she realizes, as she stares at the diamond on her finger behind Castle's back.

It's _happening_.

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><p>Her dress is absolutely amazing, perfect. However, it burns her skin when she touches it. The white color haunts her, reminding her of how her innocence was long ago stolen. The dress is perfect and therefore tells her of her own imperfections. She stares at herself in the long mirror. Her hair is done in curls, her makeup is fixed perfectly right, and the dress is flattering on her. She's gorgeous, but she's not herself. Behind her, Lanie is grinning so wide that it hurts to look at it. She looks down at her perfectly manicured fingers as she holds her hand to her stomach, trying to calm her nerves, but instead, she is just reminded of the scars hidden under the layers of silk.<p>

Scars. Haunted terrible memories. Heartbreak. Depression. Gloominess. The bad memories drown out and shadow the good. Her life is haunted. Her life is a past of awful memories and a present of the past. Scars. The three bullet wounds that cover her torso, the almost invisible scars on her wrists and thighs, a knife mark on her upper arm, a permanent indention on her left calf from a piece of metal that she had been stabbed with, scars from her accident lining her stomach and legs, the long, jagged scar from…, and on her scalp the scars from events she cannot recall. All memories of unhappiness. All reasons why he should not be waiting for her at the altar.

She breathes. In and out. In and out.

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><p>The church is silent, still. Everyone holds their breaths hoping without heart that what they know is not reality. At the altar stands a groom, frozen, forever waiting on the bride that would never come. It's a horror story. A happily never after.<p>

It's the one that was told all along.


End file.
